Warning: post ahead may be nonsensical to you, dear reader (ha, there are all of one of you, maybe two? And you know I appreciate you!) but it’s completely sensical to me! LOL, this blog is turning into a big ol’ Dear Diary session. 🙂

Two main happenings lately in my self-exploration, both as a result (one directly, one indirectly) of the coaching I’ve been doing for three sessions now. I am starting to make more and more connections the deeper into the coaching we get. As I wrote in my last post, we did some exploration around a metaphorical statement of my life’s purpose. After a week and half or so of mulling, revisiting the visualizations we did, and doing a bit of wordsmithing (not too much, but soooo tempting to spin wheels here), I’ve hit on a phrase that I’m not ready to share with the world but is feeling like it is right – for now. (The quote at the top of the post illustrates why it’s ok that the “right now” caveat is there.) I’ve been rolling the statement around in my head and love it. I need to do some hand-writing in my journal about it before I am ready to unveil (might be never!), but wanted to get some things out here first since I typically prefer typing because the thoughts can come out so much faster. That’s the first part.

The second part is that my coach also sent me this article about life purpose, which led me down the rabbit hole to – it turns out – this far more important-for-me-right-now post. (Trigger warning: rape/graphic sexual language.) When I read the second one in particular, it was an aha: the reason I haven’t started up a business is because I don’t really want to. I don’t really want to do all the accounting. I don’t really want to rely on myself for only-just-good-enough (aka shitty) benefits, mainly health insurance. What attracts me to having my own business is the scheduling and creative freedom. So how can I have that in my current life? And with this realization, I think this year of working .5 in my outside employment is a great start. And I’m proud that I’ll be doing that, and scared, but excited.

This aha felt peaceful, felt right. Jess Lively talks about the intuition as a cool well, we can dip into it for refreshing water/wisdom, the information it gives us is not fearful or damaging. That’s how this moment felt. Suddenly I did not feel like a failure for not getting something off the ground. This realization, along with the work on my life purpose statement, has me feeling so much better about life – like I now have “permission” (from myself) to work on the projects that really draw my attention, regardless of the money they might make us – like that it’s ok to continue to want to live frugally because that will give us the financial freedom not to be tied to full-time work that crushes the life purpose sometimes. I find myself looking at other aspects of my life through the lens of the purpose statement: how can I listen better to others? Be more present? Abdicate some of my obsession with technology? Tap the wisdom of others to improve problems that are real here and now? And none of this will necessarily make me any money, but it will all make me happier.

So, some further interesting observations/thoughts. When I started the life coaching, I declared pretty strongly that THE main thing I wanted to get out of the experience was to focus down onto ONE business idea. Now that does not feel true! Not at all! And part of me is like, shit, I am paying a LOT of money for this coaching and I’m not gonna have something to “show” for it at the end? Not going to have the start of a business? Because, like, my inner peace, confidence, and happiness is worth nothing? Huh.

I have not been well lately. And that’s bumming me out. I have a newfound energy (you’ll see why below) and then just when I think I’m on the upswing, I slide back again and have to languish in bed. It’s hard to continue to be sick with a mystery illness and not really know what to do about it – and somehow this kind of thing always happens in our house on a holiday weekend. Hoping to get in to my regular clinic ASAP on Monday. Fingers crossed.

More than anything, though, I’m excited – I am going to start working with a coach. Well, I already have. She is delightful, and I expect to make some changes in my life on account of working with her. I’m scared shitless, as I unabashedly told her. But after reading back over this journal, and seeing all the themes of being stuck, being hopeless, being depressed, being idle, overthinking, perfectionism, etc., I am hoping to focus and take some real actions.

First action is to attend a workshop on the Art of Hosting next week. I do not know if this is the initial focus I will take in freelancing/self-employment/service/etc., but I will know more soon. I am so glad I was brave enough to sign up for this workshop. I wasn’t sure I should. It had a $500 sticker, and I am going part time next school year and had JUST expressed some misgivings about money to my husband. But I felt compelled to sign up, and decided to go for it. I think it helped that I was “applying,” not registering. That gave me a bit of a buffer to say, “oh well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, no harm in applying.” Once I was offered a spot, I simply inquired if the organizer knew of any grants or scholarships to help offset the cost. She did not. About a week later I got a message from her saying that they’d had so many participants pay the full cost of the workshop that the budget had enough room to offer a few participants to enroll for just the cost of the food and photocopies – $75! Kismet! If I’d never thrown my name in the ring, that wouldn’t have happened – so very glad I did.

So my coach already assisted me in finding an intention to take with me into the workshop – to make connections both to people and to material. I found several images online, and need to text her one. Then I’ll put the image on my computer for the time of the workshop. The one below is one that keeps popping into my mind from my searching. I resisted it because it doesn’t represent humans, though that’s what’s in my mind – while I want to seek the connections with the other participants as well as with the material, the main focus will be on the people. However, this graphic more closely represents human networks/interactions more than many of the stock photos Google turns up (ahem, youthful white business people holding light bulbs?) At least this graphic has a variety of sizes, thicknesses, intensities . . . some connections functioning in the foreground and some in the background. And complex! Beautiful.